Intrigued by the production of several geo-remixed (a term borrowed from Ethan Zuckerman) videos in Sri Lanka of Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ song, I penned an article for Groundviews. I submit, Happiness is clearly present and growing apace within specific social, political, economic stratum and geographic loci. At the risk of caricature, those uncritical of governance, comfortable with growing inequity, ignorant ...

Linked to my last post on what I wrote recently for SciDev.net on Big Data, I recently gave a public lecture at the International Security Network, which is part of Zurich’s world renowned ETH University, on Big Data, ICTs and New Media in Times of Crisis. Far more memorable, for me, than the lecture itself was my interaction with Peter ...

I couldn’t make it to Paris, but managed despite some technical hiccups to be present virtually at the Online Dispute Resolution 2017 Forum through Skype Video. The agenda can be downloaded as a PDF from here. I made a few overarching observations in the prescribed time that I had, which wasn’t much. I noted that human rights and business ...

This article first appeared on Techonomy. ### Facebook is a company that responds to pressure, and to lawsuits, but we in the Global South, at least as much affected by its harms as users in the United States, are at a significant disadvantage in wielding such tools on our own behalf. That has generally meant we have made less progress ...

Cross posted from the ICT4Peace Foundation’s website. ### The ICT4Peace Foundation, in collaboration with International Idea and Google Ideas, curated the first of its kind workshop on technology and constitutional building processes at the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia, on Monday, 16 November 2015. The concept note to the workshop can be read here. As noted on the event webpage, ...

After an elephantine gestation, Facebook released its civil rights audit on 7th July 2020. The 90 page report, anchored in the main to civil rights issues in the US, is absolutely scathing in its criticism of Facebook. Nothing of what is captured in it is new or surprising to those of us who have flagged these issues for years. ...

At a time when China’s portfolio in Sri Lanka’s economy is growing exponentially, questions over the bona fides of its massive investments in our national communications networks won’t go down well with the Chinese or Sri Lankan governments. ZTE and Huawei have themselves responded to the US Congressional investigations into their operations, with the expected repudiation of all the charges ...

My article on technology and reconciliation in post-war Sri Lanka has finally appeared in print in Sinhala. The September 2012 issue of Saama Vimarshi (Peace Monitor) published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives is now online, and features my essay. The original English version can be read here. The issue is embedded below, and the essay appears on Page 34. ...

Though this poster is very easily debunked, the intent is clear. It is not just aimed at discrediting those who organised the vigil. The purpose it serves is larger and holds currency for longer. The intent here is to mislead and spread hate against identity groups targeted by Sinhale as being somehow anti-patriotic, alien and invasive. The intended audience ...

What we see today in Sri Lanka is that the most textured discussions on politics is often led by those outside political parties. It is a discussion that is rich, varied and multi-polar, anchored to not just one entity, location or language. It cannot be censored and through a variety of mediums encourages those who were never before part of ...

Invited by Transparency International New Zealand, I gave a presentation titled ‘Demons in our demos’ for a Zoom gathering held on 29 July 2020, hosted by the University of Wellington as part of their leadership week. PDF of event description here. Are we collectively ruining democracy? Polarisation of thought and belief seems to be on the increase particularly in the ...

I was invited to take part, over Skype video, in a panel on social media, viral news and the future of peace negotiations at Build Peace 2017, held early December in Bogota, Colombia. My great disappointment at not being able to attend in person was somewhat offset by what was a great conversation with Juanita León, Director, La Silla Vacía moderated ...

Innovation and paywalls were the buzzwords at the 20th World Editors Forum (WEF) and the 65th World Newspaper Congress, held recently in Bangkok, Thailand. There was hardly any panel which didn’t address the ostensible merits of establishing a paywall, or how innovation – proposed and perceived mostly as mobile app development, responsive web design or changes in the newsroom culture ...

I blew the whistle on the NSA’s surveillance practices not because I believed that the United States was uniquely at fault, but because I believe that mass surveillance of innocents – the construction of enormous, state-run surveillance time machines that can turn back the clock on the most intimate details of our lives – is a threat to all ...

In the last quarter of 2017, pushback over Twitter to content Groundviews pushed out over the same platform came from sources not encountered or interacted with before. This piqued the interest of the site’s founding editor, Sanjana Hattotuwa, for one key reason. All the accounts publishing content against Groundviews were overwhelmingly promoting and partial to Namal Rajapaksa, a Member ...

The problem is simply stated. Peacebuilding today, however defined and conducted, cannot exclude the importance and impact of content produced and shared on Twitter (and other social media platforms). This content is particularly resonant when produced and disseminated within cycles of violence, either during or after war. The volume of this content is growing. The pace with which it is ...

In early May I was invited to take part in an interview on ‘Beyond School Books’, a podcast series produced by UNICEF New York, looking at technology and peacebuilding. The podcast and related article was published today (you’ll need VLC or RealPlayer to listen to the audio stream). Talking about how technology has changed the way we monitor peace, ...

Presentation delivered today at Open Edit, held at Park Street Mews, Colombo. A lively discussion ensued focussed around the politics of exclusion, power, the nature of corporate ownership over archived web content, questions over the nature of access, retention, formats, fundamental questions over the right to be forgotten and the interest of some to not be tracked, traced or archived ...

Screenshot The ICODR Podcast, from the International Council for Online Dispute Resolution (icodr.org), covers the rapidly growing field of online dispute resolution. Hosted by Ian Macduff, the podcast interviews ODR experts from around the world to discuss the latest developments in the field, with an eye to ethics, culture, security, and impartiality. I joined the wonderful Ian Macduff for a ...

I was recently in Myanmar, where at the invitation of the Myanmar Information Management Unit (MIMU), I conducted an information presentation on hate and dangerous speech monitoring plus counter-speech strategies, as well as social media strategies during and in response to elections. In a subsequent conversation with someone from the excellent Phandeeyar initiative based in Yangon, we talked about ...